


The Infernal Deli

by Hillsofuhhtennessee



Category: KISS (US Band)
Genre: Casadastraphobia, Gen, Historical Horror, Horror, Hotel fires, MC finally doesn’t die for once, Old Vegas, basically a more supernatural version of the mgm grand fire, showgirls, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 18:00:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hillsofuhhtennessee/pseuds/Hillsofuhhtennessee
Summary: A showgirl weary after a long day of rehearsals for an upcoming show meets a weird man in the hotel deli while getting a midnight snack of cake.  And then she awakens to a smoky hellscape, trapped in her hotel tower.Contains realistic and often graphic depictions  of hotel fire.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	The Infernal Deli

**Author's Note:**

> This story is heavily inspired and informed by actual accounts of the 1980 MGM Grand fire. While the supernatural elements are pure fiction, the details of the fire itself are heavily grounded in reality. 
> 
> Don’t be overly paranoid about the events of this story happening irl, the actual disaster led to massive changes in fire codes. Part of why I write so many fire fics about Gene/Demon is because Kiss’s heyday was also a time where there were several very high profile fires that led to massive changes in fire safety requirements.

She dashed down the stairs with the other girls, frantic to get down in time for her cue but hindered by heels. Her throat burned from hours of exertion during last minute preparations for the show. She practically leapt into the arms of the dresser, who helped her strip off one pile of feathers in mere minutes before she strutted back to her line. She was a showgirl. She was unflappable, her smile never fading and walk always graceful despite her quads burning from climbing flights of stairs throughout the days of rehearsals. But it was all worth it whenever she basked under the bright stage lights, strolling and twirling in her feathers and rhinestones and feeling like an untouchable harpy goddess. Being a part of that alien mystique, that perfectly choreographed world dictated by step numbers and the pulse of the music. 

She waltzed offstage after the finale, entering the dressing room like a carriage horse-peacock hybrid. The girls were gaggling about all manners of things as they always did backstage. 

“Can you believe they used to make the girls go out an fraternize with the mob? Forget the legality of it, I want to know how many cocktail waitresses they took out with their hats! How many fits the wardrobe staff had when they lost tufts of feathers out on the floor!”

She chuckled at the thought of a wild six foot featherduster wreaking havoc at a fancy casino. All those cigarettes and trailing feather boas and open drinks seemed like a recipe for disaster. She’d been out in costume for some promotional spots, but that was in open areas with careful coordination and supervision. She couldn’t imagine having to deal with a semi-public setting like that, especially when she was so wiped like this. It was the last show of the night, though, and she was exhausted, so she was headed straight to her room to sleep. She wiped off her mask of stage makeup, watching her cartoonish lips and lashes vanish as she became just a leggy but unassuming young lady again. 

As she made her way across the complex, thankful that the resort ran at all wee hours of the night, she noticed a twinge of hunger. She took note of the half-shuttered restaurants she blazed by as she passed through the floor, until she noticed a 24-hour deli with some rather enticing-looking cakes. 

The only person in the alcove was the sleepy-eyed, frizzy-haired man behind the counter. He looked bored to death as he stared at the clock, probably counting down the minutes to the end of his shift. 

“I’ll take a slice of chocolate pound cake”

His eyes perked up slightly at the sight of a customer, especially a frazzled but elegant young lady rather than some drunken gambler for once.

“Certainly, certainly.”

He pulled a plate out of the rattling chiller case. 

“You come here often?”

“I work here.”

He looked her up and down.

“Oh, are you one of those girls in the show coming up?”

She didn’t respond.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mommy. Let’s just say I understand that feeling of being exposed and untouchable yet available to everyone as well. And fortunately, I’m also just as individually unrecognizable as you probably are. I just work graveyard shift at the deli to make ends meet and for the free day-old cake.”

He pulled out his own slab of coffee cake, probably leftover from the morning before, and practically crammed the whole thing in his mouth at once. He had a droopy face like a melting rubber mask. And a mouth that opened much wider than it probably should. 

“I’m gonna get so fat here with all these buffets around. I don’t know how you can resist having all that stuff in your face without becoming that dancing hippo from Fantasia.”

He was staring at the ceiling tiles and pictures of the stars on the walls, an odd hungry look on his face. 

“Well, it’s a very active job and I’m so busy and tired that stuffing my face like that all the time isn’t all that appealing.”

She leaned against the counter as she slowly ate her cake, as he wolfed down slice after slice, eyes still flitting about the air vents in the corners of the room. What was this guy’s deal?

“Do you ever look up at the sky and think about what would happen if someone turned gravity off and you just kept rising? Find a weak point in the ceiling, bust through, slither through the ducts, pop out a chimney, just keep flying into the oblivion of space.”

This was just getting weird and uncomfortable. 

“Are you ever gonna fix that rattly fridge behind you? I’m not expert on those things, but I don’t think there’s supposed o be a flickering orange light on them.”

He finally looked at her.

“I’ll prod maintenance about it.”

He forced a look of satisfaction and hurriedly put the crumb-covered plates aside.

“Alright miss, it’s closing time now so best be on your way. I don’t want to waste any more time if they ain’t gonna pay me.”

She finally reached the stairwell for her tower, and weighed whether to practice her steps or just take the elevator since she was dead tired. The elevator won, 16 floors was a bit excessive to do on foot. As she ascended she kept thinking about that weird man in the deli. At least he hadn’t followed her or done anything actively malicious, but man that was just an awkward encounter. Falling into the sky? Working a lonely night shift there must have been really getting to his head. 

She stumbled into her bedroom and passed out on the bed in the wee hours of the morning. She slept deeply.

She dreamed of what she did day in and day out, rehearsing. She was deep in the bowels of the backstage, being helped into a colossal red feathery ensemble she’d never seen before. And then they told her to break in her shoes with a bit of dancing, which she did. As she twirled her boas and strutted about, her shoes got hotter and hotter, her movements more frenzied and erratic, her feet screaming in pain. And she felt a burning rage within her, at everyone who’d yelled at her in life. At some vestige of early childhood fury at the teachers at school. And everyone around her, her show family she’d always loved, suddenly became the guards of a prison she’d felt trapped in. She lashed at them, her whole body now burning, them now burning, the whole underworld of the stage now burning, and nobody above knew anything, all they saw was a bit too much fog rising. She began to fall into the sky, liquifying and slipping between the gaps in the ceiling panels and up with the smoke. Her heat and rage choked up her throat, yet she maintained an inhuman ability to breath, confusing her into consciousness.

She gasped for breath, the air thick and toxic, smoke pouring from the air conditioning duct. Unable to scream, she stumbled towards the door to run from her room, only to collapse against it, her eye against the peephole

On the other side was the hideous face of death. Pallid, its eyes hardly visible in its greasy, charred sockets, its oversized mouth stretched in a foul grin.

She leapt back from the door in disbelief and scrambled for the bathroom to wet a towel and caulk the vents. Smoky black tendrils seeped even from the sink and tub faucets as uncomfortably lukewarm water poured at with them cranked to the cold setting. Crouched like a Victorian orphan in a coal mine, she rammed them against the door as the foul, melted fingers of the specter tried to penetrate that narrow gap. They were half black, bony char, half unscathed human flesh. It screamed in a high, whinging tone when the water splashed it. 

She threw a towel against the air conditioner vent as well, which a warped, oozing leg of melted plastic and metal was slowly extending from. Desperate for air, she grabbed a chair and hurled it against her window like a furious rock star, smashing it and breathing deeply, only to get a mouthful of smoke streaming from the window below. It was marginally less concentrated at least. Below, the casino burned and a long plume of smoke trailed into the sky like one of her feather headdresses. 

It was a brief moment’s respite but she couldn’t tell where the fire was and needed to get out, now. She’d rather dash down all 16 flights of stairs blind than sit here and eat herself alive not knowing when her rescue would come. 

Wait.... she was supposed to be on the 16th floor, wasn’t she?

The view out her window certainly wasn’t hundreds of feet in the air. It was more the height of some piddly Holiday Inn. What on earth? 

She looked at her room key, which clearly read 1616. 

Rift in reality or not, she was more determined than ever to escape. She wouldn’t let herself die in the tower like a damsel in distress as the flames and smoke rose higher and higher.

She wrapped a wet towel around her face and braved the choked hallway, stumbling along on all fours as she scurried to the stairs. The smoke was unbearably thick, but she soldiered on, bumping against the protrusions in the walls and the occasional open room doors until she slammed against the stairwell door. It didn’t budge no matter how hard she tried to shove it open. Something flickered behind the glass, a winged figure effortlessly sailing into the air like smoke up a chimney. She felt someone grab her shoulder.

She met the eyes of the weird man from the deli, their piercing glare just visible in the smoke from behind his own towel bandanna. Why was he staying here? He furiously pointed back at her room, urging her to something she didn’t understand. 

“Don’t. Go. In. Unless you want your soul to fall into the sky like the smoke. I like you.”

His voice was freakishly clear, he should have been coughing or at least hoarse. She just looked at him befuddled, until he ripped off his towel, revealing his burned black lips and oversized grinning mouth. In a sick parody of how she wiped off her stage makeup hours ago, he wiped off his sooty tanned skin to reveal ghost white and scorched black. The face of death. It screamed, horrible and whining like a whistling kettle, and charged towards the stairwell, liquifying and slipping through the gaps in the door hinged. It slammed its horrible face against the glass, its sunken eyes piercing her very soul. It thrashed its head around, grabbing its studded collar like it was choking itself, then pointed behind her to gesture her to go. Then it vanished, leaving only the imprint of its greasy face as it screamed from higher up the stairwell. 

She clambered back to her room and holed herself up again, as she watched the firetruck ladders rescue people from the adjacent rooms. She grabbed a floral sheet and furiously waved it to get their attention. She practically leapt into the arms of the firemen, wishing they were her dressers so she could peel off her horribly soot-stained clothes. She felt so much better with clean air to breathe, recovering as she descended the steps with an instinctual bit of cheeky showgirl walk, even keeping her eyes up as she did when blindly climbing them on stage. 

At the auditorium where survivors were taken, she ended up by a man with his head in his hands. He’d arrived after the fire had been extinguished, being stuck on a floor beyond the reach of the ladder trucks. 

“You tried to take the stairs and failed too? You dodged a bullet there, miss. I had to take them to get out of the building afterwards. I’ll spare you the details but... it was a death trap. Firefighters told me the smoke just got funneled right up it like a chimney and it killed anyone who tried to run that way. The doors were blocked by piles of bodies.”

That fact hung heavy in her mind whenever she thought about that fateful morning. That, the mysterious shifting room number, and the way the management was condemned for not having sprinklers for a restaurant that wasn’t open 24 hours. A restaurant that wasn’t even open when she’d gotten out of rehearsals. That infernal deli where the blaze had started.


End file.
